iPhone overload: Dutch T-Mobile issues refund after 3G issues

It's not just AT&T. T-Mobile in the Netherlands offers the iPhone and it's now …

Of the three mobile network operators in the Netherlands, only T-Mobile sells the iPhone. And only T-Mobile has a large part of its customer base irate from lack of 3G data access, dropped calls, and calls going directly to voicemail even with full 3G coverage.

So no, such problems aren't limited just to AT&T. And as with AT&T, the problems are worst in the largest and most tech-savvy cities. Those problems are now so bad that T-Mobile is offering a little cashback for affected users.

3G problems

iPhone users have complained about T-Mobile's data performance for some time, but recently the problem seems to have spun out of control. Not only is 3G data service slow, but voice service is also suffering in certain locations on 3G phones—not just the iPhone.

Turning off 3G magically makes the voice problems disappear, but it doesn't really help with the data slowness because T-Mobile doesn't have EDGE 2.75G service. Instead, it has GPRS, which can just about manage to beat 56Kbps dial-up on a good day.

Earlier, T-Mobile said it was working on the congestion in its 3G network by adding new base stations, something that would take until the end of the year. However, now the problems are supposed to be mostly fixed in "one or two weeks" by doubling the capacity of existing base stations in affected locations, though the longer-term plan to increase the number of base stations continues.

In the meantime, Dutch T-Mobile users who document their issues on the "coverage questions" page on the carrier's website can expect a refund of two months' worth of data usage. However, the iPhone plans, which start at €30 per month, don't explicitly list data charges. Reportedly, the cashback will amount to €30 for iPhone users. It's also unclear what happens to 3G users who don't have a data plan.

Ironically, T-Mobile almost got fined for leaving 3G frequencies unused late last year. There are currently three mobile network operators in the Netherlands: KPN, Vodafone, and T-Mobile. There used to be five, but KPN took over Telfort and T-Mobile picked up Orange. After those deals, KPN and T-Mobile left Telfort's and Orange's 3G frequencies unused, contrary to the obligations set out by the government. KPN chose to return Telfort's 3G frequencies to the government, but T-Mobile put Orange's into token use in order to hang on to them while escaping fines. Quite likely, the current efforts to double the 3G capacity in congested locations make use of these frequencies, although no spokesperson would ever dream of boring the public with such details.

Problems ahead

The question is, how long will the new and improved T-Mobile 3G network last? Dutch Railways is rolling out free WiFi access in its intercity trains, using T-Mobile's 3G network for backhaul. That's a potential audience of 150,000 free WiFi users by the end of the year. And the Dutch just love using anything that's free to its fullest. (Belgians joke that copper wire was invented by two people who spotted a penny on an Amsterdam street at the same time.)

The iPad will soon arrive in the low country, along with a newer iPhone with new data-intensive features such as video chat. For a while now, the mobile industry has been struggling with increased data use by smartphone users, but with "unlimited" plans the increase in use doesn't lead to an increase in revenue, so expensive network upgrades directly impact the bottom line (and not in a good way). In this light, AT&T's move away from unlimited mobile data makes a lot of sense. Then again, users hate volume-based pricing for Internet access.

19 Reader Comments

This post truly is correct. By myself, I live in The Netherlands and I'm on T-Mobile with a Nokia smartphone.I do not use 3G since we do not have coverage of that in the area that I live in, but we have one of the best coverages of the complete country here. We have very good reception of GSM, GPRS and other ways to connect.But, it's very hard to be called and to call. Lots of calls are currently being dropped - instead, a message plays, stating that the cellular tower is over capacity and that I "should try again later". People who call me usually land in my voicemail by now.

It's going mad out here! I don't know if it's the same sort of horror with AT&T in the US, but I definitely want my money back on this one.I have always loved T-Mobile here for their (very) reasonable contracts, good coverage and speedy internet, but it's breaking down quickly for me now.

Let's just hope they'll be able to fix it soon, because I can't keep walking around with a phone being pretty much useless in my pocket!

AT&T's move away from unlimited mobile data would make sense if they weren't experiencing record profits year after freaking year. They tripled their profits from $4 billion to $12 billion between 2005 and 2008. The only reason they can change to a paltry 2 GB per month limit is because the US wireless market is extremely uncompetitive.

This problem apparently applies to the Netherlands as well. The government was either well-lobbied or completely and utterly incompetent to let 2 major mergers occur in an industry with only 5 major competitors. Creating a market with only 3 massive incumbents is a guarantee for abuse, and the regulators should have had scales and metrics to realize this. 5 is already cutting it far too close.

I was at the IEEE ICC conference two weeks ago, where someone had an opening talk about what is happening in mobile data. The amount of data per user is going up relatively steeply, while the number of megabytes that can be provided per euro/dollar is growing much more slowly. When these lines cross, the mobile operators will be in trouble, unless they can increase the revenue per user. With flat fee unlimited data that obviously isn't going to happen. So unlimited data for a flat fee per month is simply not tenable in the future. So far many mobile operators have adopted the "jump off the cliff and grow your wings on the way down" approach, often coupled with insidious data use limitations, but it looks like AT&T wants to move beyond that towards a more stable mobile data business model.

I want to be VERY clear about this. My wife and I do NOT have a problems with DATA on our iPhones. It's PHONE CALLS that we have LOTS of problems with. Again, not DATA.

We live in the Seattle area (Seattle, WA USA) and probably 30% of the time people try to call us they get voice mail when we absolutely weren't using the phone, the phone sits in front of me on my desk, and I never heard it ring. If I turn off sound it vibrates instead of rings, right, so I should hear that and I don't. Instead, maybe 5 minutes later or two HOURS or maybe FOUR HOURS later I get notified that I have a voice mail.

Do they really? Historically, metered access whether mobile or landline has always been insanely expensive. I don't think anybody really knows how users would react to reasonable metered rates. (For example, ATT is planning on charging $30 for 2gb so that would come to $0.015 / mb, of course 2gb is a maximum, and there are fixed costs per customer, so let's give ourselves room for error and say $0.05... by comparison ATT currently charges at least 10 times that price for metered access.)

Of course, carriers don't want to find out because it commoditizes their business. The dirty secret is that it already is a commodity business and the profit margins are sustained only by quasi-monopoly status, but it makes regulators and shareholders feel better to imagine that carriers are adding value, which no doubt has an indirect impact on upper management's social status in the hampton party circuit, which is the whole point, right?

I want to be VERY clear about this. My wife and I do NOT have a problems with DATA on our iPhones. It's PHONE CALLS that we have LOTS of problems with. Again, not DATA.

We live in the Seattle area (Seattle, WA USA) and probably 30% of the time people try to call us they get voice mail when we absolutely weren't using the phone, the phone sits in front of me on my desk, and I never heard it ring. If I turn off sound it vibrates instead of rings, right, so I should hear that and I don't. Instead, maybe 5 minutes later or two HOURS or maybe FOUR HOURS later I get notified that I have a voice mail.

THAT, is the PROBLEM with AT&T! Not DATA.

And be very clear that it depends on where you are. There are going to be certain places around the country where its not going to be a problem. But for those places where there is a glut of iPhone there are issues.

It looks like Apple has a talent of picking the least reputable provider in a country.ATT in the US and T-Mobile in Holland (although I don't know how the situation is in other countries).T-Mobile is a price-fighter in Holland. I don't understand why Apple, being so keen on being seen as a Premium Brand, associates itself with sub-par providers.Actually, the T-Mobile service is primarily what keeps me from buying an iPhone at all.

I want to be VERY clear about this. My wife and I do NOT have a problems with DATA on our iPhones. It's PHONE CALLS that we have LOTS of problems with. Again, not DATA.

We live in the Seattle area (Seattle, WA USA) and probably 30% of the time people try to call us they get voice mail when we absolutely weren't using the phone, the phone sits in front of me on my desk, and I never heard it ring. If I turn off sound it vibrates instead of rings, right, so I should hear that and I don't. Instead, maybe 5 minutes later or two HOURS or maybe FOUR HOURS later I get notified that I have a voice mail.

THAT, is the PROBLEM with AT&T! Not DATA.

Well, I also live in Seattle, WA USA and I don't have any problems with phone calls on my iPhone. Anecdotal evidence again. Which isn't to say that you're not having issues, just that perhaps AT&T's problems are more granular than we believe. Any chance you live in the shadow of one of the larger hills or mountains?

I was at the IEEE ICC conference two weeks ago, where someone had an opening talk about what is happening in mobile data. The amount of data per user is going up relatively steeply, while the number of megabytes that can be provided per euro/dollar is growing much more slowly. When these lines cross, the mobile operators will be in trouble, unless they can increase the revenue per user. With flat fee unlimited data that obviously isn't going to happen. So unlimited data for a flat fee per month is simply not tenable in the future. So far many mobile operators have adopted the "jump off the cliff and grow your wings on the way down" approach, often coupled with insidious data use limitations, but it looks like AT&T wants to move beyond that towards a more stable mobile data business model.

Specifically who was up there that was spouting this garbage? The limit in a wireless network has always been spectrum. The development of 3.9G has already alleviated that problem, and 4G's specs aim to blow 3.9G's spectral efficiency out of the water. Once you've run the fiber to the cell tower upgrading bandwidth is simple and cheap, especially as prices drop on better equipment over time. This article talks about the boost Moore's Law is continually giving to ISPs: http://dslprime.com/dslprime/42-d/3092- ... oores-lawq

And again, AT&T and Verizon Wireless are all making record profits. When you talk about cost/GB, you're implying they're struggling with expenses, which is simply not true. Their wireless divisions are absolute cash cows.

The value and prices we're getting in America pales in comparison to Scandivanian countries, as well as what free.fr will provide once its owner turns on his wireless network in 2011. This article claims it costs $3/GB of added capacity: http://www.circleid.com/posts/20100215_ ... e_in_2010/.

And AT&T is causing my wife not to get a new (4G?) iPhone. She is going back to Verizon and is going to use her current iPhone basically as an iTouch.

We are going to get an iPad. Most likely the 3G version because I want to try out 3G on it and Mainly though what I'm getting the 3G version for is the GPS chip, which the other version doesn't have. This will be for GPS programs which I will use in my car, plus other location based programs that might be better with GPS.

I will be trying to use Skype or another VOIP service as my main phone (with the bluetooth earpiece.

The issue with a cellular network is that you have to reuse your spectrum. More use = more reuse = more towers = expensive. It doesn't get any simpler than that. I don't know when the cost line and the usage line are going to cross, but the trend is clear and worrisome for mobile networks, even if they make a lot of money today.

The issue with a cellular network is that you have to reuse your spectrum. More use = more reuse = more towers = expensive. It doesn't get any simpler than that. I don't know when the cost line and the usage line are going to cross, but the trend is clear and worrisome for mobile networks, even if they make a lot of money today.

However spectrum is not a real issue. I'm in Japan and people here, despite having fiber connections, often tether their 3G phones and use them as their home connections instead. They've been doing this here for years.Here's another article detailing the CEO of Verizon proclaiming spectrum shortage will not be a problem for a long time, even without the FCC's involvement: http://dslprime.com/a-wireless-cloud/61 ... ned-around

And again, while bringing up "worrisome costs" you fail to address the real issue: the wireless carriers are massively profitable, and have been so for ages. In fact they've become *more profitable* in the last several years. AT&T just had a record quarter, thanks in large part to the iPhone. In European, especially Scandinavian, countries 3G is even more ubiquitous and widely used. The carriers there still manage to be quite profitable.

Given all this evidence, it should be obvious that AT&T's moves were completely unjustified. And any "worries" about bandwidth consumption are unfounded. It's true that even when true 4G rolls out urban areas may not be capable of having everyone in the city stream HD TV on their cell phones all day long, but that won't be an issue with femtocells. Besides, the growth of wireless bandwidth has slowed down to a steady and more manageable clip: http://dslprime.com/a-wireless-cloud/61 ... -from-5000

You need to be careful of who in the telecom industry you're listening to. There are a lot of scoundrels out there.

Yep 3G data is certainly imploding here... it used to be excellent but lately I can be sitting in a room with full bars surfing on 3G and then *bang* next moment I have no carrier signal at all. Wait 1/2 hour and it usually comes back. Move to another location and it comes back.

Sadly I didn't keep track of dates/times so no money back... but I'd prefer them just to fix the problem to be honest...

The issue with a cellular network is that you have to reuse your spectrum. More use = more reuse = more towers = expensive. It doesn't get any simpler than that. I don't know when the cost line and the usage line are going to cross, but the trend is clear and worrisome for mobile networks, even if they make a lot of money today.

But as the cells get smaller, the equipment scales down, ala femto cell base stations. 4G LTE is projected to cost even less, and then there's WiFi. But, the real problem is running the fiber all over the place.

I want to be VERY clear about this. My wife and I do NOT have a problems with DATA on our iPhones. It's PHONE CALLS that we have LOTS of problems with. Again, not DATA.

We live in the Seattle area (Seattle, WA USA) and probably 30% of the time people try to call us they get voice mail when we absolutely weren't using the phone, the phone sits in front of me on my desk, and I never heard it ring. If I turn off sound it vibrates instead of rings, right, so I should hear that and I don't. Instead, maybe 5 minutes later or two HOURS or maybe FOUR HOURS later I get notified that I have a voice mail.

THAT, is the PROBLEM with AT&T! Not DATA.

Well, I also live in Seattle, WA USA and I don't have any problems with phone calls on my iPhone. Anecdotal evidence again. Which isn't to say that you're not having issues, just that perhaps AT&T's problems are more granular than we believe. Any chance you live in the shadow of one of the larger hills or mountains?

I travel all around Seattle and the area and there is no clear parts where I lose calls to voice mail. It seems like it happens everywhere. We've also replaced out phones a couple of times.

The amazingly frustrating part is that I can have 5 bars during the time my phone doesn't ring. It is out right in front of me in my car or on my desk at work. In my car I play music through it. When I do get calls it turns off the music, so I think I would notice it if I got a call.

Iljitsch van Beijnum / Iljitsch is a contributing writer at Ars Technica, where he contributes articles about network protocols as well as Apple topics. He is currently finishing his Ph.D work at the telematics department at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M) in Spain.